Foursquare Debuts New Feature To Android Users Before iOS In Rare Move

Foursquare on Tuesday pulled off a rare move when they debuted a new mobile feature on the Google Android operating system ahead of Apple’s own iOS system which supports iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad systems. The move from a numbers point of view makes sense as Google Android devices now outsell Apple on a daily, monthly and yearly basis, however mobile app providers have traditionally debuted new applications and upgrades for their already exisitng apps for the Apple app store before moving on to other platforms.

The new upgrade is a badge that will show users notifications of activity among friends, while check-ins, photos, completed tips and swarming and trends changes can now be shown without interrupting the core use of the program.

The notification system also allows users to turn on and off device and email notices for events they don’t want to see, while all messages can be set to “temporarily off” status for one hour or until the following day.

Along with the update Foursquare has promised Blackberry and iOS updates with the new feature “as soon as possible” although an exact date has not been mentioned or even hinted at.

Foursquare began their location based service solely on the iPhone platform and at this time they will not signal as to whether or not the move is strategic in nature or just the results of a tighter development schedule performed by their Android development team.

Here’s a quick look at the new notification display on the Android system:

Here’s a look at the notification settings screen. Notice the simple options to turn off notifications for one hour or until the following day, you’ll also notice a subset of on/off options for comments, to-do-list, etc:

It should be noted that the update isn’t a major release for the Foursquare app and it’s still unclear if the Apple iOS app will function in exactly the same manner which could have effected the release date for that mobile OS’s platform. In any case Android beat iPhone this time around, finally signaling a changing of tides in favor of the world’s number one selling mobile operating system.